


Resilient (Like a Rubber Band)

by Duck_Life



Category: X-Men (Comicverse), X-Men Red (Comics)
Genre: Gen, Healing, Human Trafficking, Implied/Referenced Underage Prostitution, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Sisters, Threats of Rape/Non-Con, Unreliable Narrator
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-16
Updated: 2018-07-16
Packaged: 2019-06-11 06:14:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,224
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15309216
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Duck_Life/pseuds/Duck_Life
Summary: Gabby notices her sister Laura doing weird things sometimes, like staring off into space or acting funny. She doesn't know about the things that happened to Laura after Weapon X, and Laura doesn't want her to know.





	Resilient (Like a Rubber Band)

**Author's Note:**

> This is all really from Gabby's perspective. Her sisters sheltered her as much as they could, so even though she's the Honey Badger and she shares a lot of similarities with Laura, there's a lot she doesn't know about the world, and a lot that Laura still wants to keep her from. This is sort of a kid's-eye view of how Laura's trauma (specifically the trauma relating to her time as a prostitute in NYX) still affects Laura. 
> 
> There's some canon-typical violence and predatory behavior toward a 13-year-old girl. Definitely an upbeat ending but please stay safe, take care of yourself, you're all lovely.

Laura does weird things sometimes. Not just “retractable foot claws” weird or even “regrowing all the skin on her body after it gets burned off” weird. Sometimes she spaces out and Gabby has to poke her to bring her back to earth. Sometimes she wakes up sobbing from nightmares but refuses to tell Gabby what they’re about.

Gabby gets up one night while Jonathan’s being particularly rambunctious. Her clock says it’s almost three in the morning. She pads through the underwater tunnels of Searebro with her pet wolverine plodding along at her feet, figuring she can walk a lap around their headquarters to tucker him out and then put on some TV to quiet him down. Jonathan seems to like Levar Burton’s voice, so maybe  _ Star Trek  _ or  _ Reading Rainbow _ . 

Except she forgets all about  _ Reading Rainbow _ when she rounds the corner toward the kitchen and finds Laura standing in the middle of the floor, looking almost as if she sleepwalked there. She’s holding the biggest glass of ice water Gabby’s ever seen. “Laura?”

Laura jumps, sloshing some of her water on herself. “Gabby! Shit, didn’t see you there. Hey.” Her voice sounds trembly and weird, but her expression is normal. Gabby kind of gets the feeling like she’s trying very hard to make it look normal. She doesn’t push it. 

“Jonathan woke me up,” Gabby explains, pointing to Jonathan.

Laura smiles tightly. “Maybe you should give him a Valium.” She ruffles Gabby’s hair on her way out of the kitchen, heading back toward her bedroom. “Don’t stay up too late.”

“It’s already late!” Gabby calls after her. But Laura’s already halfway down the corridor, her back to them. 

Jonathan lets out a little whine.

* * *

 

They go to New York City one day so Laura can get lunch with Rogue and Remy. Gabby spends the whole trip using up her phone’s storage on photo after photo of the city— the skyline, the characters in Time Square, her and Laura in front of the FAO Schwartz toy store, her and Laura in front of Avengers tower, her and Laura in front of the apartment building from  _ Friends _ . 

While Laura stops to buy Italian ices from a street vendor, Gabby wanders around a corner and spots a young woman in what might be the most interesting outfit she’s ever seen— and coming from a member of the X-Men, that’s saying something. This woman’s wearing tiny shorts that barely cover her up and towering high heels. Her shirt has leopard spots all over it and she’s got on a shimmery blue wig. 

“I like your costume,” Gabby says, stepping toward her.

The woman looks surprised— and kind of embarrassed. Gabby wonders why she’s dressed up. “Why, thank you,” the woman says, doing a little half-curtsy. “Where’s your momma, kiddo?”

“Don’t have one,” Gabby says with a shrug. “What are you dressed up for?” 

The woman smiles that tight, uncomfortable smile that Gabby’s come to associate with adults keeping secrets from her. It’s the way Jean Grey smiles whenever Gabby asks where exactly she’s been for ten years. It’s the way Namor smiles whenever Gabby asks why he and King T’Challa don’t get along. No teeth. Doesn’t reach their eyes. 

“I’m going to a party,” the woman says, looking up and down the street nervously. “Seriously, kid, where’s your—”

“Gabby!” Laura yells, wheeling around the corner with an Italian ice in each hand. “Gabby, seriously, don’t run off like that.” Laura marches up to her, belatedly noticing the woman standing in front of her. “Hi, I’m so sorry,” she says in a rush. She meets the woman’s eyes, and something passes between them. And then Laura’s apologizing again and ushering Gabby across the street and onto their next tourist trap. Gabby sips her Italian ice. It’s strawberry.

* * *

 

Kurt’s the one who taught her how to make a rubber band ball. He showed her the right way to fold up the first few rubber bands so the others will bunch up around them. He showed her how to keep her patience when the rubber bands slip from her grasp and spring apart. He showed her how to layer the rubber bands as the ball got bigger to keep the surface as even as possible. 

Gabby bounces her rubber band ball against the glass walls of their underwater enclosure, watching it ricochet down the corridor. She follows it, catching it when it bounces back up and then flinging it back to the floor to watch it bounce around again. 

She only stops when she hears the low murmur of voices in the next room, and something makes her snatch the rubber band ball and hold it still. She listens. 

“... barely older than Gabby,” Laura’s saying. She sounds worn down and upset, not as bold as Gabby’s used to hearing her. “God, younger maybe. I can’t even say I know for sure how old I was, but it was right after I got away from Weapon X. They went for vulnerable young girls, living on the streets… which, you know, I  _ was _ …” 

Gabby creeps around the corner as quietly as she can, squeezing her rubber band ball tightly in one hand. She sees Laura sitting in the lounge area, gripping a cup of tea in both hands. Jean sits across from her, nodding sympathetically, her own cup of tea hovering beside her head. 

“I just shut down,” Laura says quietly, lost in memory. “Men would come and they’d pay and I’d j-just…” Her jaw trembles and she sets her cup of tea down before it spills. When she does, she notices Gabby. “Gabby!” In an instant, her demeanor shifts entirely. She throws up her walls again and smiles a big fake smile. “Gabby, what’re you up to? Where’s Trinary, I thought she was working on a project with you?” 

Jean’s not so fast to change her expression. When she turns to look at Gabby, she’s still rattled, and her eyes look devastated. 

“I’ll go find her,” Gabby says, her voice too high. She scurries away, suddenly kind of glad that all the grown-ups in her life keep so many secrets from her. 

Maybe she doesn’t want to know.

* * *

 

One day Jean leads them on a mission to somewhere in North Carolina. Gabby can tell Laura doesn’t want her to go, but she doesn’t know why. She gets herself strapped into Sentinel-X before anyone can argue with her, and then they’re off. 

On the ride there, Gabby listens. She tries to pick up on what the grown-ups are talking about, but Jean seems to be conducting a lot of the mission briefing telepathically and only telling Gabby what she needs to know. She hears the word “trafficking” at one point, which makes no sense because they’re flying there. How can there be traffic if they’re not even in a car? 

She’s still wondering about that when the Sentinel lands and they get out. “Alright,” Jean announces, leading them toward what looks like the entrance to some utility tunnels. “There’s a race going on today.” Gabby listens and she can hear the roar of engines over the sound of the crowd above them. “We need to be discrete, get in and get out. They’re using the tunnels to move these girls. We shut them down and incapacitate them, and then we can use Sentinel-X to get these girls back to their homes.” 

_ Girls _ ? Gabby wonders. She’s not sure what girls are doing in the tunnels, not watching the race up above. But that must be what they’re here for, to make sure these girls, whoever they are, don’t have to stay in the tunnels. 

Once inside the door, they split up into pairs. Gabby sticks close to Laura, her custom HONY BDGR brass knuckles ready for a fight. Laura stays a couple paces in front of her, and Gabby starts to hang back, taking in the tunnels.

It’s really cool, actually. The tunnels in Searebro are all clear and bright. These are dark and mysterious, like the catacombs in some of Jean’s fantasy novels that Gabby’s been reading. She’s so caught up in the adventure of it all, the sound of racecars zooming past somewhere above them, that Gabby doesn’t notice she’s falling too far behind Laura until she’s suddenly alone. 

“Well now she’s going to be mad,” Gabby grumbles, stomping ahead to make up the distance. Before she can get any farther, though, somebody steps out of the shadows in those mysterious tunnels. 

“You lost?” the man says, smiling sympathetically. Gabby quickly hides her brass knuckles behind her back, slips them back onto her belt. This guy looks like he works here. She doesn’t need to draw attention to the mutants on the premises. 

“I’ll be fine!” she assures the man with a sunny smile of her own. “I was trying to find the concession stand. I must have made a wrong turn.” 

He looks her up and down, probably examining her costume, Gabby thinks. She should make up a lie about how it’s to support one of the racecar drivers. “Why’s a girl like you at a race all by herself? You got no parents?”

Gabby hesitates. “Well… no, not exactly,” she says, trying to figure out how to tell a shorter version of her weird family tree, a way to leave out the clones. 

“That’s too bad,” the man says, stepping closer to her. Gabby suddenly feels the hairs on the back of her neck prick up, like she has a Spidey sense. Honey Badger sense maybe? “We’d take care of you, y’know. Me and my girls. We’d teach you everything you need to know. Why don’t you come hang out with us?”

Gabby tries to back up but that just takes her further into one of the shadowy tunnels. “I don’t think so, I should get going.” 

“So soon?” He touches her hair, and that’s when she knows she’s got some kind of Honey Badger sense because alarms are going off in her head like crazy. The man takes a lock of her hair and pinches it between his fingers, and then he tucks it behind her ear and puts his hand on her face and she wants to lunge at him but she feels frozen. “I think there’s a lot of people who’d like to have some fun with you.” 

And then twin claws erupt from his chest. The man sinks to the floor, gagging on his own blood, as Laura looms behind him. Gabby wants to say something, tell Laura she’s sorry for lagging behind, but she still feels frozen.

Frozen, she watches as Laura extracts her claws and stabs the man again in a different place. And again. And kicks him, puncturing him over and over with her toe claws. He’s not making noises anymore but she keeps slashing at him, over and over as her exerted grunts turn into an awful, ragged sobbing. 

Gabby just watches.

Finally, after what feels like hours but couldn’t have been more than a minute, Laura stops. She crouches over the very dead man, breathing hard. And Gabby finally moves, stepping forward to put her arms around Laura. 

“I’m sorry,” Gabby says quietly, not really sure what she’s apologizing for but sorry all the same. “I’m sorry.” She hugs Laura, who reeks of blood, who has it caked into her fingernails and matting her hair. 

Laura hugs her back, still crying.

* * *

 

It’s Saturday, so Gabby usually sleeps until noon. Today, though, she gets woken up around 10 by Laura putting on her shoes. “Oh, hey, Gabby,” Laura says when she notices Gabby’s eyes pop open. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to wake you up.”

Gabby yawns, sprawling across her bed and nearly kicking Jonathan off the corner. “Where’re you going?” she says, rubbing her eyes.

“Just an appointment,” Laura says, but Gabby can tell when she’s trying too hard to sound casual. She stares while Laura finishes tying her sneakers and stands up. Then Laura comes over and sits down on the edge of her bed. “Jean found me someone to talk to about some of the things I did— about some of the stuff that happened to me when I was your age,” she says, pushing Gabby’s messy hair out of her face. (It feels completely different from when the man at the racetrack did it.) 

“Like killing people?” Gabby says, ever tactful.

Laura chews her lip. “No, not that… just, just some bad stuff,” she says. “I’m going to be okay, though. I’m going to talk about it.”

“With me?”

Laura hesitates and then shakes her head. “Maybe one day,” she says. “For today, I’m just going to talk to this doctor. But don’t worry, I’ll be back this afternoon for Kurt’s underwater barbecue.” It’s an idea that Jean’s been trying to deter, but that Gabby’s ecstatic about. “If I’m a little late, just save me a bratwurst, okay?”

“Aye aye,” Gabby grins, snapping a salute.

Laura smiles and leans in to kiss Gabby on the forehead. It’s a weird gesture for her, not something Gabby can remember her doing before. But she doesn’t dislike it. 

“Bye, Laura,” Gabby says, already snuggling back into her pillows. 

“Bye, Sleepy,” Laura smirks, walking out of the room. Gabby watches her silhouette disappear into the hallway, and then she falls back asleep. 


End file.
